Atlas of Ungulate Migration

Most of the world’s large terrestrial mammals are ungulates, and many migrate seasonally to sustain their massive herds on landscapes around the planet. The abundance that migration supports in turn connects systems and promotes the resilience of the ecosystems that sustain subsistence hunting, rural economies, and provides the primary prey base for almost all the world's top carnivores. Today, the slow and steady spread of our human footprint represents a common threat to ungulate migrations across the globe. The wild landscapes that migrations require are increasingly fragmented and degraded by roads, fences, agriculture, energy development, and human settlements. Migrations are being lost for species as diverse as bighorn sheep, elk, bison, pronghorn, springbok, Thompson’s gazelle, hartebeest, scimitar-horned oryx, zebra, and wildebeest. Driven by tracking data on ungulate migrations, the Atlas of Ungulate Migration serves as a repository for up-to-date migration maps that can inform conservation planning, infrastructure development and policy making. The maps detail high, medium and low-use migration corridors for a diversity of species, ranging from the iconic Serengeti wildebeest and African elephant, to the saiga of the Central Asian steppe. Most importantly, the maps illustrate where critical migration routes intersect with linear barriers like roads or railways. This atlas represents the best available science for extant migrations, with downloadable maps each accompanied by a factsheet describing the migration in detail, the data analysis, and its specific threats. The atlas is living, and continually updated.